Faced with scandals, schools consider social media limits

Paul Roberts was “Teacher of the Year” when he was arrested and fired from his job teaching math at Stafford Middle School.

Administrators allege the 52-year-old educator’s Facebook conversations with two students featured lewd dialogue peppered with “profanity of a sexual nature.”

Paul Roberts (Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office)

Similar incidents are cropping up across the country as social media tools proliferate.

In January, a California teacher was charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy. Investigators say that relationship began with text messages, Facebook postings and instant messaging. In Illinois, a former teacher pleaded guilty this month to inappropriate communications with a then-17-year-old student after allegedly sending more than 6,000 texts over a 3-month period.

While school administrators recognize technology can foster academic conversations between teachers and students, they are trying to ensure that online communication doesn’t cross legal or ethical boundaries.

“It doesn’t always lead to sex, but we don’t need it to lead to sex before there is a problem,” said Doug Phillips, director of investigations at the Texas Education Agency. “Technology allows direct, unsupervised contact with students.”

During the 2010-11 academic year, state officials documented 111 cases of sexual misconduct and 152 cases of inappropriate relationships between teachers and students. Phillips said he has noticed an “uptick” that he attributes in part to electronic communication. Most sexual relationships begin with social media or texting, he said.

Earlier this month, substitute teacher Tiffany Michelle Amos, 25, was arrested and fired from Westfield High School in the Spring Independent School District after allegedly sending nude photos of herself to a 16-year-old male student. The two had sex a few times after the boy turned 17, court records show.

Tiffany Amos (Handout)

Other cases are less clear-cut. A Crosby Independent School District teacher resigned last month after administrators say they found questionable Facebook messages between her and a student.

“Would I call it sexual? No. It’s just a very fine line and we don’t need to go close to that line,” Superintendent Keith Moore said.

Moore said the first-year teacher violated the district’s policy of allowing teachers to communicate with students only in matters relating to their jobs.

More school districts are erring on the side of caution, raising new questions about whether teachers and students should be Facebook friends or use social media to communicate.

“We have to be careful not to limit the good parts of what technology can do for us. What if a teacher called the student on a telephone, does that mean we need to take away all our telephones?” Moore asked.

Last year, Missouri teachers filed suit alleging that a new law restricting online communications with students violated their constitutional rights. Lawmakers later repealed the measure but enacted a requirement that school districts have written policies regarding electronic communications.

“It’s a balancing act for the needs of the school and the constitutional rights of the teachers,” said Stephanie Bauman, a First Amendment attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution.”

She said school districts need to acknowledge that teachers have the right to have a life off campus, which includes appropriate online activity. What that means is often left for school districts to determine. She said the Missouri law was too broad and could have prohibited teachers from having Twitter and Facebook accounts.

The Texas education code, as updated in 2010, says teachers, staff and administrators “shall refrain from inappropriate communication with a student or minor, including electronic communication such as cell phone, text messaging, e-mail, instant messaging, blogging, or other social network communication.”

Those are the guidelines followed by the Houston Independent School District, the state’s largest with 203,000 students. HISD spokesman Jason Spencer said the district plans to develop its own policy this summer.

“I think that there are principals who would like more concrete guidance on navigating social media,” Spencer said. “As we go forward with evaluating our need for a policy, we will look at what other school districts have done and see what meets our needs.”

In the Clear Creek Independent School District, teachers are restricted from “friending” students on Facebook and from communicating with students through texting or other social media. Exceptions exist for family members and certain teachers and coaches who may text students to coordinate extracurricular activities with a parent’s permission.

“The idea is to get away from secret or one-on-one communication,” said Sheila Haddock, Clear Creek ISD general counsel.

The policies at Fort Bend and Cypress-Fairbanks Independent school districts line up with Texas Association of School Board’s recommendations, which say an employee can use electronic media with students only in the scope of their professional responsibilities, with certain exceptions.

Sonja Trainor, a senior staff attorney with the Virginia-based National School Board Association based, said that’s the direction most school districts are taking as they grapple with drafting their own social media policies.

“This is a complicated and evolving area to say the least,” she said. She added that social media platforms can “serve as a way for teachers to groom students for inappropriate behavior — that’s what we all want to avoid.”

What’s clear is the issue isn’t going to go away, particularly as young people continue to rely on social media tools. as a primary way to communicate.

Phillips, of the TEA, said he often finds examples where he cannot prove that a teacher and student had a sexual relationship, but the behavior was clearly inappropriate. He cited the case of an educator who sent messages to several male students asking if they were circumcised.

“There is no crime in asking that question,” Phillips said. “We have boundary issues with teachers in these cases.”